


Something To Do With Notre Dame

by Unsentimentalf



Series: Aggravation [3]
Category: Blake's 7
Genre: BDSM, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-23
Updated: 2016-02-10
Packaged: 2018-05-15 19:10:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5796415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unsentimentalf/pseuds/Unsentimentalf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Liberator receives a message from one of the moons of Jupiter.  It's nothing but a cryptic image of an ancient building but Avon is determined to follow it up. Unfortunately now that his brief and predictably fragile liaison with Liberator's pilot has fallen apart rather spectacularly he's finding it rather harder to get the others to do what he wants.  </p><p>Sequel to Perturbation</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Only Words That Matter

**Author's Note:**

> There is a car advert being shown at the moment in which the sort of ruggedly good looking young man who currently features on car adverts drives around Paris staring at things in an attempt to cure his writers block, for he is, we are told, a Novelist and that’s the sort of thing that Novelists do. At the end he demonstrates the true artist's keen eye for subtlety and fine detail by announcing in his heavy French accent and with an air of great revelation that his new novel’s plot “could have something to do with Notre Dame Cathedral", possibly the least inspiring enormous building-related prompt ever.
> 
> That's where I started. That and something that happened to Tarrant.

As the hot water beat down on his bruised and battered skin, Tarrant closed his eyes and finally let himself swear aloud in blessed privacy. After a couple of minutes of this he opened his eyes again. Through the hazy glass of the shower cubicle he could now see a blurred figure standing in the main room.

Tarrant would know that profile anywhere. He stepped out of the water, wrapped the white towel around his waist and went to see what Avon had to say about his evening’s entertainment. With any luck that would provide Tarrant with a suitable excuse to floor the bastard, hopefully repeatedly.

Avon looked exactly as he had when Tarrant had last seen him two hours before, which didn't seem really fair. He was inspecting the various items strewn around the room. He picked up the thin cane, slapped it into his palm as he turned to face Tarrant. “That must have stung.” he commented.

Tarrant didn’t bother dignifying that with a response. His fingers rotated the teleport bracelet, which had, as specified, remained on his wrist all evening. “Do you happen to know where my clothes went?”

“Probably.” Avon walked around him, looking at the visible marks. “I take if that you won’t be this stupid again.”

“Well, I won’t be stupid enough to let you arrange my entertainment in future,” Tarrant said.

“I arranged what you said you wanted. Did they stick to the rules?”

“Moreorless,” Nothing appeared to be broken.

“A more precise assessment, please. I need to know if they owe me a surcharge.”

“Surcharge? No.” Tarrant considered Avon for a moment. “How much did you charge them in the first place?”

“Five thousand.” Avon said casually.

“That much? You could have told me!”

“It wasn’t your concern, “ Avon said. “If you thought you were doing it for money you’d have bailed out as soon as it got rough.” He lifted a hand to forestall Tarrant’s objection. “If you prefer, let’s say instead as soon as you decided you weren’t having any fun. Which, you recall, is what I said you wouldn't have. I trust that you won't need to argue with me about that subject again.”

“Clothes,” Tarrant said sharply.

Avon opened a cupboard and lifted out the familiar garments. “Do you need anything else?”

Painkillers, or better still access to Liberator’s med unit. Everything ached and stung. He wasn’t going to give Avon the satisfaction of hearing him complain about that. “How about my five thousand credits?” he suggested.

"We'll discuss your share later." Avon was watching him dress. Tarrant could feel his eyes on every mark and abrasion.

"So what cut do pimps normally take round here?"

"You're my property. If I choose to hire you out, technically the money's mine"

Tarrant stopped , shirt halfway over his head. His arms ached in protest. "I'm your what?"

Avon was actually smiling at him. Surely he must know how close he was to being punched? "These places have conventions, Tarrant. Deemed ownership is one of them. Some people take it more seriously than others. I did tell you, repeatedly, that you wouldn't like it here."

"But you do. Did you have to pay for your pleasure too? "

"None of your business." 

"Really? So what exactly have you been doing for fun while I was getting beaten up by strangers?"

"Exactly what I told you I'd be doing." Avon retorted. "There's very little point in your being angry with me, Tarrant. This has been your misjudgement all along. You had a safe word, you had your teleport bracelet, you had my warnings and you had a full briefing in advance. Nobody pushed you into doing any of this and nobody forced you to go through with it to the end."

Tarrant continued to dress. Avon let him. If the man had had a hand in making those weals then he'd be all over Tarrant by now. Apparently admiring someone else's handiwork didn't do it for Avon. Tarrant supposed that was fair enough. Someone else's handiwork hadn't done it for him either.

Avon had gone back to browsing around the room, picking up item after item. Tarrant wanted no more of any of them.

"Are we done here?"

"I'll go up first and relieve Dayna at the teleport," Avon said. "I'll let you know when the coast's clear."

A few minutes later Tarrant teleported up to the ship and immediately strode off towards the med unit. Avon didn't follow.

 

***

"Pretty," Tarrant said from over Avon's shoulder. "Are we going palace robbing?"

"Suspend your piratical impulses for the moment," Avon said without looking round. "It's not a palace, it's a cathedral."

"What's the difference?"

Avon frowned at the screen. "Gods live there, not kings."

Tarrant had come round to the screen for a better look. His finger rested on a tiny human figure in one of the doorways. "Look at it. The place is huge. Are these gods meant to be at all belligerent?"

"The god of the builders was believed to be both invisible and incorporeal." Orac said.

Tarrant gave an appreciative half laugh. "Nothing like building a huge house for monstrous invisible gods to keep the neighbours looking over their shoulders. Who are the jokers behind it?"

"The original Notre Dame cathedral was built on Earth several centuries before the space flight era. It was reputed to have been levelled to the ground during the particularly inaptly named War of Reason and the remains are believed to have been destroyed in the construction of Dome 8," the computer said.

"Well, Earth's the one place we certainly can't go to check. What's this about, anyway? " Tarrant demanded of Avon."Why's someone sending us their ancient holiday snaps?"

"The image was an anonymous communication from off the ship." Avon said with some reluctance. "It arrived while you were asleep. And if you'd been paying any sort of attention you'd have noticed that this image is date stamped three days ago, which suggests that this isn't the original building. Ever heard of the Europa Heritage Park?"

"Heritage? Wash your mouth out, Kerr Avon. You know that's a dirty word. And no, I haven't, but if I had to guess I'd say it might be the mysterious thing under that big dome on Europa that no one's allowed anywhere near. The one that everyone one thinks is a military research base."

Avon nodded slightly in acknowledgement of the deduction. "Orac will explain the history."

"Orac will not!" the device snapped. "I have wasted enough time on this matter already.. If you want your subordinate to know you can tell him yourself."

"Subordinate, Avon?" Tarrant said, a slight edge in his still cheerful voice . "Now what stories have you been telling Orac about us?"

"It is programmed to make observations and draw its own conclusions. I'm not responsible for those."

"Of course not. Well then, Master, I humbly beg you to enlighten me. "

Avon twitched slightly at the appellation. Tarrant was just baiting him. The stranger two weeks ago had been a traditionalist, into the whole master/slave thing. Avon had never bothered even suggesting anything of the sort to Tarrant.

He pushed that thought aside. "How much early spaceflight era history do you know?"

"Not much, " Tarrant said. "When i was young and irresponsible I skipped classes that looked boring."

"You're still young and irresponsible." Avon muttered. "Right. The invention of FTL flight made a handful of early space faring families quite extraordinary rich. Thousands of times richer, comparatively, than the richest families of the Federation are today. As a result they had to think of ways to spend their money that wouldn't cause the whole economy of the Earth and the newly settled planets would collapse

"Ah. The problems of the rich. Got to feel for them. See how fortunate you were to screw up your bank heist?" Tarrant said.

Avon ignored that. "One particularly megalomaniac woman decided that she was going to duplicate all the greatest Earth buildings under a dome on Europa, using vast quantities of original Earth materials which got dug out and hauled at unbelievable expense across the solar system and reconstructed by thousands of master craftspeople. And there they've stayed ever since."

"I thought nothing much from that era had lasted?"

"This did. Her descendants retained some political clout and Europa's pretty much out of the way so no-one's ever gone to the trouble of destroying the park. Access has been completely forbidden; the Federation disapproves of too much history, of course, and they have no intention of letting people compare the glories of Old Earth architecture to the dreariness of Dome constructions. A Federation unit maintains the external dome periodically but otherwise it's left alone. That's according to Orac's sources anyway.”

He let the screen zoom on the figure, the face at maximum resolution still a handful of pixels. “According to Federation records no-one's set foot inside the main dome for over thirty years. It's sealed tight. The dome maintenance's done from a separate facility. Whoever that is, the Federation doesn't know he's there."

"Or alternatively Servalan put him there and sent us a photo in the hope that we'd swing by and say hello. Another obvious trap." Tarrant said lightly. "We haven't fallen into one of those for nearly a week. I was starting to get bored. You're not usually this stupid. What's really caught your interest about all this?"

Avon expanded the image again, zoomed in on the carvings on the towers. Tarrant was often a nuisance but not usually this way. Jumping in feet first was more his style than holding back in excess caution. "The signal came through on a frequency that the rebels used to communicate with Blake."

"Easy enough to torture out of some poor sod.”

"Perhaps, perhaps not . I want to go and look. We can take all necessary precautions." He glanced up at Tarrant. "You can stay in the ship if you prefer."

"How will that help? If it's Servalan, the ship is what she's after. I'm not going to back you on this, Avon. Not unless you come up with some better reason to risk all our necks getting within spitting distance of Earth than that."' He gestured at the screen.

Avon's better reason was so tentative and circumstantial that he saw no point in trying it out on Tarrant yet. He could appeal to the fragile shipboard democracy but if he couldn't persuade their riskophilic pilot to go along with it he was very unlikely to get the support of the other three.

Time for another approach entirely. He pushed his chair away from the screen and gave Tarrant a slow and deliberately unconcealed appraisal. "You’re unusually risk averse these days. Was it that bad?"

Tarrant bridled. "That has nothing to do with this. Except maybe as another demonstration of your lousy judgement, Avon."

"My judgement? Who warned you against the whole thing? Repeatedly?"

"You said you'd set up something typical. There were three of them. What sort of typical is that?"

"It was a realistic assessment of your capabilities. If you'd been one-on-one or even two you'd have broken loose and broken some limbs in the first few minutes and then walked out. No one pays for that sort of experience. "

"I haven't broken anything of yours yet," Tarrant pointed out. Avon couldn't help noticing that his voice was now lacking in any trace of humour.

"I've never given you an opening. The men out there aren't as good as I am."

"They didn't need to be good. There were three of the bastards." Tarrant turned on his heel. "The others will be up at the end of this shift. They're not going to let you take Liberator to Europa either. You won't win this one, Avon. Let it go. I need coffee and something to eat. I'll see you later."

Avon watched him go. He wasn't quite sure whether that had gone as well as could be expected or not and not knowing annoyed him. Nothing had been settled since they got back from their brief recreation.

The visit to the club had been intended solely for his own distraction. He had thought that maybe a hardcore session with a stranger might make him a little less inclined to be quite so enthusiastic about the limited range of things he could do with an inexperienced and not terribly kinky partner. It would be a reminder that there were more interesting things out there than Del Tarrant, whose company he felt he had been getting a little too used to. 

Tarrant's discovery of his intentions and insistence on coming along too had been mildly irritating, no more than that. Avon had pointed out that the planet had luxury brothels of all varieties and that Tarrant would do far better to look there for appropriate entertainment. Tarrant, like the spoilt rich brat he was, insisted that only Avon's club would do. Avon had sighed, arranged things as precisely as he could to Tarrant's rather vague instructions and left him to it, confident that when the two hours were done he'd come back to a sheepish Tarrant either propping up the bar on his fourth or fifth drink or long since returned to the ship. He still wasn't at all sure why that hadn't happened. 

It had achieved something at least. In the two weeks since Tarrant hadn't turned up at his quarters once. That was a good thing, Avon told himself. There would only have been trouble later down the line if they had carried on, bigger trouble than Tarrant's current sulk. Far better for the man to go off the idea of recreational masochism as a result of someone else's heavy handed practices than because of Avon's actions. This way they need not fall out over the issue.

Clearly Tarrant wasn't happy right now but that had never been the point. The point had always been whether Avon could use him and the rest of the crew to achieve what he needed to achieve. And that brought him back to the cathedral.

"Orac. Have you got me a map yet?"

"It appears that no map of the Europa Heritage Park exists anywhere in the Federation computer system. "

" Do you have anything at all? Images, written descriptions? Anything about what's down there? "

"I have retrieved a list of the names and the geographical reference of the original buildings. You should be able to cross reference those to data on the Earth constructions which will indicate the likely parameters of the Europa duplicates.

"Well that's something. Transfer it to my console and keep looking. "

It was there. Notre Dame de Paris, France, just as Orac had identified it. Surely that couldn't be a coincidence?

If it was a coincidence then Tarrant was right, there was nothing on offer worth the risk. If it wasn't?

A map would help. If the cathedral was sited next to an entrance then the choice of that particular image could be nothing more than chance. If not... He needed to investigate. They'd only need a flypast at long range and Zen could provide a high resolution scan of the buildings under the dome. They didn't have to land, not until he was sure there was something down there for him. But he was going to Europa and that meant the others were going to have no choice but to come too.

***

Cally wasn't sure if all the yelling was a step forward or a step back. Tarrant and Avon hadn't openly argued like this since Kairos- since before their relationship had very obviously changed.

The subject barely seemed worth the decibel count. Avon wanted to pursue a mysterious message, Tarrant seemed determined not to. 

Cally had known Avon a great deal longer that Tarrant had and she was fairly certain of the eventual outcome. Vila had been bought off with the promise that he could stay safe in Liberator. Dayna had been inclined to disagree with Tarrant about everything ever since he'd switched his romantic attentions, if romantic was anything like the right word, and Avon had rather cleverly sold the girl on the idea of visiting the system that had been the human birthplace even if not the actual planet.

Cally herself was inclined to agreed with Tarrant that this was risk without clear purpose but she had no intention of visibly taking sides while the two men were laying into each other in intemperate terms that seemed at times to have very little to do with this particular argument. She had interrupted sharply a few minutes ago when they had started to stray into territory completely inappropriate for the flight deck, and they had both glanced at her and then changed tack back to the safer waters of Liberator's proposed operations, but she wasn't sure how long that would last. Something had been badly wrong between them for a while and this was no time or place to sort it out.

"You've both been up for two shifts," she said, loud enough to get their attention. "Whatever this message means there's no indication that its urgent. Why don't you get some sleep and we'll come back to this in a few hours time. Orac might have found something more useful by then."

Avon nodded at her. He did look tired. "Zen, set course back towards the solar system."

"We haven't agreed anything," Tarrant protested.

"We're not headed for anywhere in particular right now. It will take two days to get to Sol. We might as well go in the right direction while we argue about it".

"That makes sense, " Cally agreed.

Tarrant glared at Avon. " Don't push your luck."

"Do you have a serious objection to this course change or are you being perverse?'

"Perverse?" Tarrant said. "Is that meant to be funny?"

Cally stepped quickly between them. "Get some rest," she told them. "And give the rest of us the chance to recover from our headaches. "

 

There was a collective exhalation from the others as the door closed.

"Bloody hell", Vila said. "I guess Tarrant got tired of playing whipping boy. Do you think that's what Avon's always like when he's... you know... frustrated?"

"Don't," Dayna said. "I really don't want to think about what they get up to."

"It's their business," Cally said. "Not ours."

"I wish it was their business," Vila complained. "It feels like having a front row seat in a really bizarre porno. Which wouldn't be so bad if it have any beautiful naked women in it but all this one has is those two. Can't you talk to them, Cally?"

"Why can't you?" she retorted.

"I've noticed that I’m not one of Tarrant's favourite people . Or Avon's either, come to think of it. They listen to you."

“No,” Cally said, firmly. “Not a chance.”

***

Eight hours later Avon looked at least considerably less tired. He waved Cally to a seat in his quarters.

"Do we really have to go to Europa?” she started.

“Did Blake ever mention the French to you? “

“I don't think so. Why?

“Pity. Yes, we have to go.”

“Because it's something to do with Blake?”

“Because it might be.”

“Tarrant's right though. Earth is very dangerous.”

"The Solar System's a big, dark, mostly empty place. Earth will never know we came anywhere near it. We won't be anywhere near it, in fact.”

Cally knew very little about Earth and its sun. If Avon was certain... That left the other topic that she supposed that she had to raise. “Why are you so annoyed with Tarrant?”

Avon looked surprised. “I very seldom get annoyed and only over things that matter. Despite his endless self aggrandisement our pilot isn’t one of those."

"There was a lot of shouting going on back there for someone with such an even temper.”

“That's easily explained. Tarrant is annoyed with me."

"About what?"

He smiled without warmth. "I'm sure if you ask him he'll tell you all about it in graphic detail. I suggest that you don't ask."

"Just tell me one thing. Is he right to be angry?"

"Not with me, no. I imagine he'll figure that out eventually."

She thought about that for a couple of seconds. “Are you going to talk to him about it?”

“Not if I can possibly avoid it. Leave him to sulk, Cally. He'll get over it soon enough.”

***

Tarrant wasn't entirely surprised to find Cally waiting when he emerged from his quarters.

"Everything all right? "

"Avon is determined to go to Europa, "she said, without preamble. "He thinks it’s important. I think we should let him. We can always run if we encounter trouble."

"There's something he's not telling us." Tarrant countered. "Trust me, that man's never got anyone's interests but his own at heart. "

She walked beside him for a moment in silence. Then "I'm probably going to regret asking this but why did you two fall out?"

Tarrant was tempted just to tell her. That would end Avon's unwarranted reputation for good judgement. It couldn't be unsaid later though, and maybe that would make things a great deal worse. He tried to think of a way to get across the degree of Avon’s culpability without giving details.

“He played what I suppose he thought would be a joke at my expense and the consequences were unpleasant."

"A joke? Avon? Are you sure?"

"No, I'm not sure, but that's the only remotely charitable interpretation of his actions that I've managed to come up with."

Cally frowned. "You should talk to him about it if you don't know why he did it. There might be a reason."

"Oh, I'm sure he's got a whole stream of self justifications. I don't care to listen to them. It doesn't really matter, Cally. That's over and done with. If Avon tells us why he really wants to go to Europa I'll fly the ship there. I just don't particularly want to be blindsided by his secrets again."

***

"Liberty, equality, fraternity," Avon said. If he had to do this he might as well get it done. "Does that mean anything to any of you?"

"Rings a bell," Vila said. "Wasn't it one of Blake's things?"

That was unexpected and useful. Vila had a keen ear and a good memory.

"Indeed," Avon agreed. "I must have heard him quote those words at least three times."

"So?" Tarrant demanded, still verging on outright belligerent. "What's that got to do with Europa?"

"The Europa Heritage Park had over five hundred buildings. Only one came from France, the ancient Earth region whose slogan Blake was so free with. Notre Dame, the one in the image. I think that might not be coincidence. "

“You think it's a message from Blake?" Vila said. "From inside the Solar System itself? Isn't that a bit far fetched?"

"Probably not Blake but someone who knew him- who knew his attachment to France and knew I'd know about it too. They wanted my attention and they've got it." He looked at Tarrant. "That's all I have. Satisfied?"

"Not in the slightest but I said I'd take Liberator there so I will. Just don't expect me to put her in danger staying around to rescue you when you run into trouble though. "

“You'd be a fool to risk Liberator for any of us." Avon deliberately sounded dismissive. "Since I've never relied on any of your goodwill in the past I'm hardly likely to start now."

"Well you know what happened to the last shreds of my goodwill," Tarrant said, "I hope your entertainment was worth it."

Avon thought of the data crystal in his quarters, still unplayed. “I’m sure it was,” he said, then wished he’d omitted the bit about being sure which made it sound as if there was some actual doubt about the matter. 

Tarrant have him a look of utter disgust then looked down to the pilot's screen. *Let's get this over with. Thirty hours until we reach the solar system. I'll need details of all the outer solar system defences and all the current Jupiter system ship deployments. We'll have to avoid flying close to Jupiter - too many watching eyes - but a gravity well that size won't make it easy. How close to this dome do you actually need to get and for how long?"

"Zen can do the scan in twenty seconds from as far out as Saturn but if I need to go down there you'll have to find somewhere to hide the ship for a while."

"In the Solar System? The system with the highest traffic and the most concentrated surveillance of anywhere in the entire galaxy and you want me to just park the Liberator behind a convenient asteroid while you go for a stroll?"

"Jupiter isn't Earth.' Avon said. "You'll find a way do it." 

"Your confidence in me is flattering. " His voice had lightened already with the prospect of a challenge, Avon thought. However determined Tarrant was to hang on to his grievances Avon was sure they didn't run particularly deep. 

***

Fifteen hours out from Jupiter and the last chance to get some rest before the real trouble started. Avon lay on the bed in his quarters, wide awake. 

After a while he swung himself off the bed and picked up the crystal. He hadn't watched it because he hadn't needed to see it. He'd seen Tarrant's bare skin, had counted and categorised the cuts, weals and bruises, had noted exactly where the fetters digging into his skin had left their repeated impressions. Red marks around the temples, a cut in the corner of the man's mouth, chafing around the groin- these and the items dropped around the room, the drug induced dilation of the men's pupils when they'd paid him, had told the whole story to anyone experienced enough to read it. 

Only words had passed through that room without leaving any physical mark except the imprint on the recorder. 

That shouldn't matter. Anything said in those particular circumstances was completely irrelevant afterwards. The only words that matter are the safe ones and the club's automatic safeguards meant that Avon could be sure that those hasn't been spoken. But Tarrant didn't seem to acknowledge the basic rules, even the ones that Avon had been at pains to make him understand. 

Maybe Avon ought to watch it. Maybe it would be wiser to know exactly what had been said to Tarrant and what he had said in response, however unimportant such information ought to be. 

He turned the crystal around, the blue facets reflecting the low light. It would take two hours and a certain amount of personal involvement to view it. He knew already that he couldn't watch Tarrant in pain dispassionately. No. They were already too close to Earth and he could get called back to the flight deck at any moment. 

Avon returned to the bed and pushed Tarrant out of his mind, focused on achieving a light meditative state and eventually dropped into a real sleep

***

 

End of part 1


	2. Spinning In One Place

Rocks filled the viewscreen, retreated until they were a line in the edge of a flat curved ribbon, thinner and thinner until that too was no more than a wide glowing line in the star studded darkness. In an instant, fast enough to make the viewers flinch, the screen was full of reds and oranges, moving as the stars had done,left to right. The swirls of Jupiter passed in front of them for twenty seconds or so until, just as abruptly, the screen showed darkness again, the single bright gleam of far distant Sol and the flat rings of light, resolving into the ribbon of rocks coming towards them, faster and faster until it seemed that one huge rock must inevitably collide... and just as fast, it started to recede.

“Do we really have to spin round like this?” Vila complained. “It’s making me feel sick.”

“You know what they say,” Tarrant said. “When in an asteroid belt, do as the asteroids do.”

He was remarkably proud of the spin he’d put on Liberator. Set almost perfectly around her rather inexplicably complex centre of gravity, he calculated that it would take the ship no more than ten metres closer to the nearest rock in six hours, not that they should need to be here for six hours. 

Jupiter didn’t have much of a rocky asteroid belt but there were the remnants of what might once have been a very small moon in a thin layer on the outer edge of the dust rings and that was where he’d chosen to hide. A object rotating slowly should be far less conspicuous around here than a unnaturally still one. 

“You said we wouldn’t be in the asteroid belt. I distinctly remember you saying that.”

“We’re not in it, precisely. At nearest approach we’re over 400 metres from the closest rock.”

“Metres?” Vila looked horrified. “I thought you were talking about miles! What if the rocks move?”

Zen was onto that, calculating the minute shifts in trajectories for everything within a thousand metres in a ridiculously extended version of the three body problem which in Earth mathematical terms Tarrant knew should be just about impossible. He’d come to trust the alien ship, though. If Zen said it could do it, it would. That wouldn’t stop a rock from further away with a much higher than average velocity from hitting them though, which was why Tarrant had automatics set on full alert and he wasn’t intending to so much as to step away from the controls until Avon and Dayna were back on board and they were well away. 

“Zen. Put Europa on the subscreen and magnify. Compensate for the spin.”

The second screen showed the grey white surface of the icy moon. Europa with its naturally occurring water supplies had been one of the earliest bodies settled in the Outer Planets and there were still the remains of old domes across its surface, but for some reason that hadn’t interested Tarrant when he was in school enough for him to remember it hadn’t been suitable for terraforming and humans had gradually moved onto places where they could change the atmosphere to let them breathe and grow crops unaided. 

The only domes currently in operation were the one over the heritage park and a very small one for the once yearly routine maintenance crew. Both oxygen and heat for the two domes were generated from a small nuclear plant run off the ample natural water supplies along with a in-dome planted ecosystem and it cost virtually nothing to run. The budget for the entire affair came to little more than the cost of two engineers for one day a year and since it tended to be used as a training exercise not even qualified ones. Tarrant had begun to understand why no-one had been prepared to take the decision to destroy it. 

There was the silver dome, a bare two miles across, with the graphic from the ship’s earlier scan overlaid on top. The blue light was the cathedral, in the heart of the artificial city, and the two red flashing lights marked the position of Avon and Dayna, teleported down quarter of a mile away between a delicately turreted castle and a odd dark green solid concrete block so that they could approach with all due caution.

Tarrant watched the red lights converge slowly on the blue. Avon’s voice came over the speaker. “The buildings are pretty overgrown down here, and Dayna reckons she can hear small animals running away from us. As long as they keep running away we should be all right. No sign of people or machines. The paths between the buildings are clear of vegetation. I don’t know what’s causing that.” 

“Do you want me to ask Orac?” Tarrant offered.

“No, I want you to keep my ship in one piece.”

“I’m quite capable of doing both,” 

“We’ve already established that you have no idea what you aren’t capable of. We’ve just spotted the cathedral tower, going to communicator silence. Do your job and we’ll deal with things down here. Avon out.”

Tarrant counted to five, slowly, then looked around. Vila’s gaze was very firmly on his console read-out. There was silence from Cally in the teleport room.

“You know why Avon didn’t go down there alone, don’t you?” he said to Vila in a conversational tone.

Vila looked up at him. “We need Avon. No-one would really let you maroon him.”

“The way things are going right now,” Tarrant said, “I don’t think I’d give anyone a chance to stop me.”

“Ah,” Vila said. “I suppose I ought to ask if you want to talk about it but I have a horrible feeling the answer might be yes. How about a drink instead?”

Tarrant glanced at the screen showing the asteroid belt as it appeared to advance and retreat. That huge and particularly jagged looking rock was very close indeed. “Not right at the moment, no. How about we make that several drinks later?”

“You’re on,” Vila said. “Look, they are just about there. What do you think they’ll find?”

“A trap,” Tarrant said. “Of one sort or another.” He caught the slight shake of Vila’s head. “You don’t think so?”

“If I was setting a trap for Liberator,” Vila said, “I’d make the bait something we’d find irresistible. I don’t even know what the bait is meant to be for this one.”

“That’s easy.” Tarrant said. “It’s Avon’s pride. A puzzle that he alone could figure out and now he thinks that he gets to figure out the rest of it down there. It wasn’t set for Liberator. It was set for him. That’s why none of the rest of us could see the point in going there.”

Vila was staring at him. “You have told him this, haven’t you?”

“I told him it was bound to be a trap. He wasn’t interested.”

“Did you tell him why you thought it was a trap? How it was set for him?”

Tarrant thought about it. “Not in so many words, I suppose. We haven’t been chatting much recently, what with one thing and another. But he must know. It’s obvious.”

Vila swore under his breath and opened the link to Cally. “Bring them back. Right now. Don’t talk to them about it, just do it.”

After a few seconds her voice came back. “I can’t. It’s not working. I can’t open the link to them either.”

“Hellfire.” Tarrant said. “So what do we do now?”

 

***

 

Avon ran his fingers across the solid stone, thought of the hundreds of millions of miles each piece had come. The wall stretched up in what seemed like a perfectly vertical cliff face. Tonnes and tonnes of the stuff, worked by hand, costing decades and an unimaginable fortune just to make a fake. The original might had been built for a God but this had been built just on a whim. 

Dayna seemed distracted by no such musings. She was sliding through the shadows in front of him, a gun in her hand. He’d warned her not to be too trigger happy. Avon were expecting to meet someone down here; he would be disappointed if he didn’t get the chance to find out who had sent him that message while whoever it was was still breathing.

The band across the centre of the dome was glowing, not strongly, the shadows it cast mixed and confusing. Around the front of the building was a door, maybe twice human sized, ajar. Inside there was the glow of a little stronger artificial light.

“Cover me,” Avon said to Dayna and he moved into the entrance. 

He’d expected the inside to be like any large building, a mass of rooms, stairs and corridors. To his astonishment it was just one huge open space. The roof arched high above him, almost in darkness, the sides had layers of open arches. Only the part nearest him was lit by lamps hanging at head height from the walls. The floor was marble and when he stepped forward cautiously he could hear the faint echo of his footfall from all around him. 

There was no-one to be seen. Dayna came up silently to stand next to him,

“What do we do now?” she asked. 

“We’re expected. None of the other buildings had lights on. Let’s take a look around.”

They were halfway across the lit area when someone appeared from out of the darkness. Avon stopped, hand on his gun, and let him advance. 

“Kerr Avon,” the man said. “It’s been a long time.”

Avon tried not to look as bewildered as he felt. “Saro. Saro Atticus. Now this is a surprise.”

Saro still had a short, neat black beard. He didn’t look that much different. A bit older; maybe a bit too much older given the time that had elapsed. He was smiling. 

“I wasn’t sure you’d come. But he was certain you’d work it out.”

“He? Blake?”

“Of course Blake. Who else would have sent for you?” Saro’s smile widened slightly. “I think he’s missed having you around.”

“Blake?” This was all too easy. Avon didn’t trust it for a moment. “Why isn’t he here? Why on earth this rigmarole?”

“He’s close enough. Liberator’s changed her crew recently. He wasn’t sure he could trust them. We agreed- he and I- that you at least were reliable. I’d wait here and if it was you in charge I’d take you to him. Coming?”

Avon didn’t move. “What are you doing with Blake?”

Saro laughed. “Oh Avon, not jealous, surely? Nothing like that. I don’t think I’m his type. I’ve been in the Jupiter Resistance for a couple of years. He found his way to us a few weeks ago. Nice guy, Roj. We’re like that.”

He crossed his fingers. Avon tried to get his head around the idea of Saro Atticus as a resistance fighter and mostly failed. Still, it wasn’t impossible he supposed. The man certainly had every reason to hold a grudge against the Federation. And not just the Feds. 

He dropped into a walk next to Saro. “Last time I saw you,” he started.

Saro laughed again. “Forget it. You didn’t have much choice, did you? And it worked out all right in the end. I’d rather be here fighting with Blake and the resistance than stuck mending vid units. Wait there a moment.” They had reached a set of arches. Avon and Dayna halted automatically at his gesture. 

There was a hum and a glow between them and Saro. Avon twisted to look behind him, then up. He and Dayna were in a force field box, glowing in the centre of the cathedral. 

“Cally! Bring us up!”

Nothing. He wasn’t particularly surprised. He glared at Saro. “No Blake, then.”

“I’m told that he’s dead. I rather hope so. How on earth did you stand that smug insufferable prick, Avon?”

“You did know him, then.”

“Oh yes. After you denounced me I had the inhumane punishment of spending two months in a cell with bloody Roj Blake. Every time they took him out and tortured him I cheered a little inside. Eventually, of course, they wiped what passed for his brain and let him go. I, on the other hand, went to the Centauri Penal Colony for degenerates.”

He wasn’t smiling now. “The guards weren’t particularly interested in preventing sexual degeneracy, just escapes. You’d have found it interesting, Kerr Avon. I have no doubt that you’d have murdered and tortured your way to the top. I couldn’t do that.”

“So how did you....No.” Avon said. “You didn’t escape. She came to find you. The records would have shown that you were someone who knew me and who knew Blake separately- she must have thought you’d be useful, and so you turned out to be. And after all you’d have done anything to get out of there.”

“It wasn’t about escape by then,” Saro hissed. “It was about revenge.”

“Yes, I suppose it would have been. What happens now?”

“Now we wait for Liberator and your friends. After that she says I can have you.” Saro smiled, as cold as one of Avon’s own smiles. “And won’t that be a fun trip down memory lane?”

 

“Are you going to explain any of this?” Dayna demanded, low voiced. Saro had retreated to one of the long thin stone benches that filled parts of the floor but was still watching them.

Avon thought about it. His first instinct was to say no, but Dayna was undoubtedly just as trapped as he was and with just as poor a prospect. It was probably fair to let her know a little of why. 

“Saro there was an ... acquaintance back on Earth. An occasional sexual partner. I reported him to the police for degenerate sexual behaviour.”

“You did what?” Dayna stared at him. “Why?”

“He’d been indiscreet. They were already onto him which meant that as soon as they’d questioned him they’d be onto me. That wasn’t a particularly appealing prospect so I got my defense in first and it worked, just.”

“That’s terrible,” she said. “You didn’t even know that he’d betray you. He might have kept quiet.”

Avon shook his head. “You forget. I knew exactly how he’d respond under pressure. Some masochists have nerves of steel. He wasn’t one of them. He’d beg and plead and offer anything you wanted. I imagine he’s still doing it now.”

Dayna’s dark eyes watched him with something approaching contempt. “Sometimes,” she said, “I don’t know which of you and Tarrant I feel more sorry for.”

“He’s got Liberator and I’ve got a an appointment with someone who doesn’t like me very much and several years experience of really quite nasty things to draw on. Or possibly, if I get really lucky, just Servalan. I know where my sympathy would lie. The most sensible thing Tarrant can do is stick to his plan not to rescue us.”

“He was only not going to rescue you,” Dayna pointed out. “Not me.”

“Very true,” Avon said. “That’s why I brought you along.”

The conversation lapsed at that point. Avon watched Saro and thought about culpability and revenge. That didn’t get him very far so he thought about escape instead.

They didn’t know where Liberator was, clearly. Score one for Tarrant. But they must know it was close and that the others were extremely unlikely to just abandon Avon and Dayna and fly away. 

There were no ships currently on Europa. Liberator’s scans had established that before they’d teleported down. Who was down here with Saro? Anyone? No-one? Given the apparent security of the force field box it was unlike Servalan not to turn up and gloat, so she was probably elsewhere. If it turned out that Avon had been caught by just one man he would not be happy, even if the initial set up had been extensive. 

Had he been particularly incautious because of their history? Avon gave that a few minutes consideration. He didn’t think so. He wasn’t foolish enough to mistake a particular sexual preference for an indication of either incompetence or lack of malevolence. One or two of the scariest bastards he’d ever met were submissives in the bedroom. He hadn’t thought much of Saro years ago because Saro was a basically unimpressive character, not because the man happened to get off on being kicked and sworn at. 

On the other hand he really hadn’t paid enough attention to the scale of the grudge that Saro might be carrying. Avon had known that the man was already in the ranks of the condemned before he’d acted. Nothing he did was going to make any difference to Saro, just to him. Apparently that hadn’t been quite as obvious from the other side.

So it seemed that he was back to contemplating blame after all. He hadn’t been responsible for Saro’s fate but he was going to suffer the consequences as if he had been because everyone preferred to believe that what happened to them was all some-one else’s fault and not their own stupidity.

Avon stood in his shimmering cage in the middle of a fake cathedral in an empty world and wondered for the first time with rather more than passing curiosity just what Del Tarrant might be thinking about him right now.

***

At that moment Tarrant was too preoccupied to think about Avon as anything more than one element in part of his wider strategic problem. Cally was stuck with the teleport just in case the missing crew managed somehow to get in touch. He couldn't leave the navigational controls because Liberator was still spinning in place ridiculously close to several thousand moving objects any one of which might rip bits off the the hull if things went badly. 

That left only Vila to try to get something helpful out of Orac about what might have happened on Europa. Orac insisted with what was almost for it a cheerful demeanour that by far the most likely event was simply the sudden and total destruction of the bracelets, almost certainly along with the wearers. 

"Well that's it then," Vila said gloomily. "Shall we leave?" 

"I thought you said we needed Avon?" Tarrant said

"Only alive. His atoms aren't much use to us disassembled. I'm sorry about Dayna. I liked her."

It didn't feel to Tarrant as if Avon was dead. Surely he couldn't still feel this furious with someone who no longer existed? "We'll find them." 

"How? You can't leave the ship or it will crash into the asteroids. And if we move they'll spot us."

"I'm dealing with that. " He pulled up data on the asteroids. Every so often a collision caused one to drift away from the belt. He just had to make Liberator look exactly like a stray piece of rock... 

"Zen. I want to move the ship away from the belt, 23 degrees to the plane, 73 degrees to the edge. One second burn, acceleration to 8 metres per second then cut all power till further notice. Keep the spin unchanged. Oh, and add a random factor of up to 2 percent to each of those numbers." There was nothing more conspicuous than whole numbers. 

He felt the ship shiver under the tiny acceleration. The further away they got from the asteroids the sooner they'd be spotted but he hoped they'd have a couple of hours at least before any automatic system would register the drift and probably another hour before the system worked out that they weren't particularly rock shaped. That was even on the assumption that someone with access to the surveillance systems was looking for the Liberator in-system. Given recent events he thought that was a reasonable assumption.

“Stay here and fly the ship,” he said to Vila. “Don't break her.” 

“I can't fly anything!” Vila protested. 

Tarrant hadn’t been entirely serious. “Don’t worry. The ship flies itself, but Zen’s not so hot on choices. Just tell it what to do when it asks and you’d do fine.”

Vila didn’t look any less horrified. “ I’m not good on decisions either. I go to pieces if you ask me whether I want coffee or not. How do I know what to tell it to do?”

“Ask it for the options then pick the one that seems to keep most of us alive longest. That’s all I do most of the time. You’ll do fine.” 

“Why can’t Cally come up here and do it? Orac could do the teleport. It’s good at that.”

Tarrant shook his head. “Orac, as Avon pointed out not that long ago, has an overdeveloped regard for its own safety. If it decided it was safer not to teleport me down there or back on board I’m sure it would find a way to ensure that didn’t happen. Don’t fuss, Vila. I’ll be back with the others shortly.”

“Trap, you said,” Vila said glumly. “How are you going to get them out of a trap?”

“If it comes to that I’ll be sure to consult my favourite expert.” He patted Vila on the back. “Stay alert and in touch with Cally. And save that drink until I’m back for mine.”

***

The flight deck was not a fun place to be on his own. Vila glanced at the screen, still showing the unsettling spinning view. They didn’t seem to be much further away from the rocks as far as he could tell. Maybe Tarrant had just pretended to move the ship away, to keep him happy.

It hadn’t worked. He wasn’t happy at all. He opened the link to the teleport room. “What’s happening, Cally? Are they back yet?”

“Tarrant’s only been gone two minutes and he came down ten minutes walk from the cathedral,” she said, in what sounded to Vila like an exaggeratedly patient voice. “He’s reported that he’s down and safe, there’s no-one to be seen yet and his communicator is working fine. Don’t worry, Vila. I’m sure he’ll be careful.” 

“Since when has Tarrant been careful? He’s the least careful person I know, and I know Dayna. Or at least I did know Dayna.” he said sadly. “Do you think they’re dead, Cally?”

“No. Why don’t you make sure Zen’s okay?”

She was tired of talking to him. “All right,” he said. Zen’s flashing lights were still flashing. Zen hadn’t yet asked him anything. What more could he do?

He could have a drink. Unfortunately that would involve leaving the flight deck to find one and he thought maybe Tarrant would kill him if he got back and found the place empty. Though Tarrant had been positively friendly, which was unsettling in itself. They were apparently going to have a drink together. Maybe the world was ending.

Or maybe Tarrant was just running out of friends. He’d upset Dayna (and Vila’s remaining shred of belief in any sanity or fairness in the universe) by preferring Avon. Which made no sense because Dayna was... and Avon was.... Well. It made no sense to Vila anyway. And then he’d fallen out with Avon after all in the most spectacular and incomprehensible fashion. 

Vila was doubtless next. Tarrant would probably not accuse him of doing whatever Avon had done which seemed to have been something particularly horrible, but it would be something else. Neglecting the ship, maybe. What was he meant to do with the ship? He was a thief, that was all. Nobody in their right minds gave him responsibility. 

Tarrant wasn’t in his right mind, though. Look what he’d let Avon do. Vila had been around. He knew a few things about unusual sexual habits, not that he’d done that sort of thing himself. Live and let live was his motto. But Avon was terrifying. Sometimes you could feel the man just not giving a damn about anyone, like a glowing aura of callousness. That sort of person should not also be the sort of person who actively enjoyed causing pain. The combination was far too dangerous. 

Of course Tarrant positively liked dangerous things. He was probably doing something suicidally reckless right now and Vila and Cally would be left alone with a ship they couldn't fly and the Federation closing in on all sides... It was almost enough to want Avon back. At least being on the same side as Avon was usually safe. Though if Tarrant liked danger so much, how awful must Avon have been to upset him so? That didn't really bear thinking about so Vila did his best not to. 

"Cally? Any news yet? "

***

Tarrant wondered why they’d built the replicas so close together. There was plenty of room on Europa, after all. Still, he wasn’t complaining.

He had climbed about thirty foot up the roof of a square edifice, using the holes that liberally dotted its sides as handholds, the clay that it was built from leaving red smears on his hands and jacket. From there he was parallel with one of the multicoloured windows, able to detect what was definitely a glow of light coming from the inside of the cathedral. Unfortunately they were too opaque to provide a view of what else might be inside. 

Nothing for it. He launched himself into the air, counting on the low gravity of the moon to let him complete a jump that would have been impossible on earth. Now on the cathedral itself, he clung to a small carved figure and tried again to see through the window without success. Finally he took out his pocket laser, very carefully removed one piece of glass around two inches in diameter and applied his eye to the gap.

He was in a fortunate position, able to look down on the sparkling blue box with, he was relieved to see, two figures upright inside. A force field of some type - he didn't recognise it. He couldn't see anyone else. He watched for a few minutes. Avon and Dayna moved around a bit but nothing else happened. 

Unquestionably bait this time. Tarrant felt a brief and thoroughly discreditable stab of satisfaction at Avon's apparent helplessness, pushed it away. Rescue first, then gloat. He brought his wrist to his mouth and spoke quietly. "Cally? I need to talk to Vila."

***

If they were bait, there must be a trap to spring. Avon paced around the box and tried to work out what it could be. He'd still seen no sign of anyone but Saro. Presuming that Tarrant or Cally wouldn't be as obliging as he had stupidly been about walking exactly where asked, there must be some other way planned to neutralise whoever came. If anyone came. 

He’d warned Dayna that they would be being watched. “Wherever you look, they’ll look,” he’d told her. “So if you see something interesting, don’t draw their attention to it.” It was difficult to take his own advice though. He wanted to check out the windows, the rafters, the arched stonework, anywhere where Servalan’s people might be hiding or Tarrant coming in.

Eventually he decided it was time to cast the dice. It might work. After a quick warning to Dayna not to interfere he called over “Saro!”

Saro came sauntering over. “What do you want?”

“I was wondering how you intended to stay alive?”

Saro glared at him. “Is that a threat?”

“Not at all. But after this is over you’re no use to Servalan and she never leaves loose ends. How do you intend to prevent her killing you?”

Saro’s smile was verging on fatuous. “Don’t worry, Avon. She likes me a great deal.”

Avon shook his head. “I’m sorry, Saro, but I’ve known her a great deal longer than you have. She only ever takes lovers who are truly innocent or truly guilty. You’ve been through far too much to be innocent, yet you’ve never really done anything bad, have you?” 

“I caught you!”

“And did I deserve it?”

“Yes. Of course.” Saro frowned. “She did say...”

“She’s got the whole of the galaxy to choose from, Saro. A burnt out masochist isn’t what she’s looking for. When this is over she’ll kill you.” He paused, as if in reflection. “Not even that. She’ll already have given the order to kill you. In her mind it’s done. You’ll never even pass through her thoughts again.”

That bit was the easy bit. After all it was no more than the truth and it hit Saro like a falling piece of the cathedral stone.

“There’s no way out,” he said.

“There’s always a way out. We can escape together.”

Saro frowned at him. “Why would I trust you, of all people?”

This was the difficult bit. If Saro had been a stranger Avon would have been floundering but he did at least know a fair bit of where this man’s weaknesses lay. 

“I heard that they were coming for you,” he said, voice deliberately expressionless. “I knew I’d be next. You know what that feeling is like. I think I would have done anything to keep them off my back but there was only one thing I could think of to do.” 

He paused, took a breath. “I never forgot what a terrible thing I’d done; what you’d gone through. What the Federation were. What I was. When I saw you here and you said you’d joined the Revolution I thought, maybe, I could at least try to put things right. But...well. If there’s anything now I or my people can do, then I swear we’ll do it, Saro. I’ll protect you, as I should have done then.” 

To give Dayna credit she had managed to listen to this ridiculous speech with a straight face. Saro’s face had crumpled. 

“But I don’t know how we can get out of here,” he moaned. 

“How many other people are here?”

“None that I know. They were going to send a lander back for me..” From his expression he had just realised how unlikely that promise had been to be kept.

“How were they going to capture the others when they came?

“I don’t know,” Saro wailed again. “They didn’t tell me. There’s only the one force box, and the camera, nothing else.”

Dayna tapped Avon on the shoulder. “If it were me,” she said, “I’d just blow the dome.”

Of course. Servalan didn’t need anyone here alive and she didn’t need the dome or any of its contents intact. All she needed to do was to wait until her camera showed the others arrived then send a missile from one of the Jupiter weapon installations. It would take maybe a minute to arrive. She’d doubtless count on finding and taking Liberator, bound to be somewhere in the solar system, once most of its crew were dead. If Liberator made a run for it instead of a rescue attempt then she’d just blow the dome anyway and give chase. 

Avon and Dayna couldn’t leave the force box and they didn’t have any survival equipment. Once the air was gone, so were they. It was an annoyingly effective way of wiping them out along with the Europa Heritage Park. Avon found he was remarkably unconcerned about the fate of the ridiculous replica buildings but he’d rather not die in one. 

“Well,” he said. “The first thing to do is to stop anyone from Liberator from arriving. Servalan may hold off for a while yet in the hope of getting another bird in the hand but once she thinks she’s got one, we’re dead.”

A small piece of something hit the ground, some way towards the door. They all spun round to look at it. 

“Don’t look up!” Avon hissed. “Whatever you do. Saro!” He slammed his fist against the force field and it sparked loud as he cursed the pain. Saro, thank God, had turned back to look at him.

“Don’t! Look! Up!” he snarled. “Both of you! Look at me! Don’t look anywhere else.” He could hear noises now up by the windows but he didn’t dare look. 

“Keep out of sight or we’re all dead,” he said very loudly to the empty air, trusting because he had no other choice that Servalan’s camera didn’t have sound pickup. If that was Del bloody Tarrant making a grand entrance then Avon swore this time he really would kill him, if they could only survive long enough for him to get the chance.


	3. Come to Dust

Tarrant had watched the whole conversation going on below while quietly digging out bits of coloured glass to enlarge the gap in his window and by the time it was large enough for him to squeeze through he had concluded that the bearded guy was alone, unarmed and not entirely sure whose side he was on. 

That made Tarrant’s rescue considerably more urgent. If he waited, Avon might just persuade the man to let them out and Tarrant's role would be downgraded from rescuer to observer which would be annoying after the trouble he'd already gone to. 

A row of decorative arches were set along the side wall between Tarrant's perch and the others, providing a flat walkway about eight inches wide. He started edging along the stonework, his back against the wall and gun in his right hand. The three people twenty foot or so below were still talking. Halfway along his foot slipped on a loose stone and chippings tumbled down, falling slowly in the low gravity, 

When the chips finally landed all three turned to look at the ground where they’d fallen. Tarrant had already swung his gun round to cover the stranger. At any second they would see him. Instead there was a loud noise, like an electrical discharge and a heartfelt “Fuck!” from Avon, who was cradling his hand. The three were looking at each other again. Incomprehensibly not one of them had looked up at Tarrant. 

Tarrant wondered if he should shoot the man anyway. He was very exposed above them. On the other hand he couldn’t see anyone planning to shoot him yet... he was still paused, thinking about it, when Avon said, “Keep out of sight or we’re dead.”

Tarrant had no doubt that Avon was addressing him. It was the sharp, dismissive tone that was Avon’s preferred means of communication with him these days. He resisted the urge that he always felt to do the opposite, just for the hell of it. Avon seldom exaggerated danger. 

Being spreadeagled across a stone wall twenty foot up, Tarrant wasn’t sure how out of sight he could be. He waited for a moment to see if Avon was going to be any more helpful. 

“Where’s the camera?” Avon said to the other man. “No, don’t look, tell me.”

“In one of the arches to your right.”

That would put it somewhere beneath Tarrant, which was handy. If he’d come in on the other side he’d have been conspicuous. 

“Audio?”

“I don’t think so.” the bearded man said. “The echoes in this place were doing something weird to the pickups so I think they switched it off.” 

“Good. Is that you, Tarrant?” Avon still hadn’t looked in his direction.

“Who else would it be? What’s going on?” 

“You need to get out. Go.”

Tarrant sighed. So much for gratitude. “I tell you what. You tell me what’s going on and then I’ll decide what I need to do. Unless you have a way of getting out of that box without me?”

From Avon’s expression he didn’t. Good. 

“Go on then,” Tarrant said. “Fill me in. Why are we going to die if that camera sees me?”

“Because Servalan’s waiting to blow the dome open when she thinks she’s got enough of us down here,” Dayna said. “Two of us apparently wasn’t enough, but Avon thinks three might do it.”

“It’s not so much the numbers,” Avon said, with a certain reluctance. “It’s whether it leaves Liberator capable of evading her ships and fleeing the system. I imagine you’ll be the one she’s particularly looking out for this time.” And, more sharply. “You were stupid to leave the ship. Cally should have come.”

“Sorry, Avon,” Tarrant said. “People careless enough to walk straight into Hessenleight fields don’t get to choose who comes to rescue them. You might try being grateful that anyone came at all.”

Avon twitched, still cradling his hand. He clearly wanted to look at Tarrant. “Is that what this is?”

“According to Orac. Who, incidentally, seemed rather disappointed to have to drop its original hypothesis that you were just dead. I worry about that computer sometimes. I think it spends too much time in your company.”

“Hessenleight fields,” Avon said. “They’re a kind of subspace EMF distortion but I didn’t know they could be artificially controlled to this extent. Yes, they’d block teleport and communication very effectively. Did Orac have any views on how we can switch it off?”

“Orac said that you couldn’t.” Tarrant told him. “Once it’s created it’s self sustaining.” He paused because he could, but it wasn’t really fair on Dayna to play games. “Fortunately this isn’t just a Hessenleight field, it’s also a trap. So I consulted our other resident expert as well and we think we can get you out of there without turning off the field itself. How much time do you think we’ll have once they work out that either I’m here or that you’re escaping?”

“The easiest way to wreck the dome would be to fire a missile from the Jupiter orbital defence system. I calculate just over a minute from launch to impact. If you can get us out in under 30 seconds we can teleport clear.” Avon said.

“I can’t.” Tarrant told him. “Orac calculated two minutes minimum.”

“Ah. That’s a pity.”

The whole situation had an air of unreality for Tarrant. He was still perched halfway up the wall with nobody looking in his direction and the teleport bracelet snug on his wrist meant that for him, if not for the others, the safety of the ship was just seconds away. As they continued to talk over the problem with no sense of immediate urgency it was difficult to believe that Avon and Dayna could really be in mortal danger. 

“Liberator could take the missile out,” he suggested. “An intercept would be easy enough if we moved into Europa orbit.”

“Could you do it from where the ship’s hidden?” Dayna asked.

“No. I picked that spot specifically because it’s out of line of sight of the defense system. We’d have to swing quarter of the way round Jupiter first.”

“Then could you do it while the rest of Jupiter’s defence systems were firing on the ship? Not to mention the ships Servalan will no doubt have waiting on the other side of the planet for when Liberator shows itself?” Avon asked.

Tarrant grimaced then realised none of them would see. “Maybe two times out of three. I wouldn’t want to bet my life on it. “

“It’s not yours you’d be betting,” Avon said. “That might be the option of last resort but I’d rather not have to gamble. Call the ship anyway. Get them to monitor the defense system." 

"That's not going to help," Tarrant pointed out. " Once the missile's fired there’s not enough time to move the ship or break you out." 

"It will give you time to get back to the ship. Saro here as well if you've brought enough bracelets. We might as well minimise unnecessary losses." 

Tarrant was more surprised by this than he probably should have been. He called back and reported recent developments to the others in case they had any bright ideas while Avon gave Saro brief instructions on the use of the bracelet which Tarrant was to throw over to him if things got imminently perilous. 

Tarrant still had no idea who this Saro might be or how he came to be in the needing rescue category but he wasn't adverse to preventing someone from being slaughtered by Servalan if he could easily do something about it. He was far more concerned however with getting his crewmates out. Saro had been keeping quiet apart from dutifully answering questions and was otherwise just gazing at Avon with an expression that even from twenty feet away Tarrant had tagged as rather odd. Though since Avon was proposing to save his life it was maybe just a combination of fear, hope and gratitude. 

"If you're done with that," Avon said, "you can tell us how we were to get out of here. Dayna and I might be able to come up with modifications to make it work."

'All right," Tarrant said. "The box is sitting on the floor because the fields have been given gravitational mass. By applying a counterforce to the outside of the box we are going to detach the field from Europa's gravity at which point it will slowly drift upwards and sideways and you can crawl out from underneath. That's the two minutes. Unfortunately when the field drifts into one of these stone walls Orac says there will be a very large explosion so the timing is crucial”

Avon contemplated that for a moment. 

"Wait a moment," Dayna said abruptly. "You're said this force field box has no floor?" 

"You're standing on the ground, "Tarrant pointed out. "If you were in direct contact with the field you'd be writhing around in pain."

'So why can't we just dig a hole under the field wall and get out that way? Bring in a couple of powerful hand lasers and it wouldn't take two minutes," she said.

Tarrant looked at the solid stone floor with some doubt. " It might take even longer.” 

"We could do both," Avon said. "If we could create a shallow trench it might halve the distance the wall would have to rise before we could get underneath. A minute might be enough, especially if the ship can take out the first missile."

He stood up a little straighter. "We'll need everything perfectly synchronised. As soon as the watchers see anything unusual the clock will be ticking. Tarrant, this is what you will do when you get back to the ship. No attempts at flair, no bright ideas of your own. Just do what I say exactly.”

***

“They’re aboard!” Cally said. Tarrant was far too busy to respond. The space between Jupiter and Europa had turned into a fireworks display, there were no less than seven pursuit ships on his tail and in the few seconds that the force wall had been dropped for the teleport to operate the ship had been hit three times. 

“Zen, “ he snapped. “Force wall up and evasive pattern six,”

That brought them swinging deep into Europa’s gravity well. As they passed over the dome the second missile- the one he’d missed- had just slammed into it, the explosion so huge that Liberator passed through the edge of the flames. There went Notre Dame. Part of his mind was calculating how close the whole thing had been- maybe ten seconds, no more. 

He couldn’t be distracted; the ships were coming up behind again, almost back on his tail, but there was the path through empty space that he’d calculated would be clear enough to accelerate through. He brought his ship round and into perfect alignment with it. “Standard by eight, now!” he told Zen. 

“Confirmed.”

The ship accelerated out of the solar system, hitting nothing on the way and leaving the pursuit far behind, and it was over. Tarrant took a deep breath as the others came running onto the flight deck. Avon was still cradling his hand but nobody else looked as if they had been hurt.

“We’re away,” he told them. “I’m afraid I had to use a little flair back there after all, Avon. Damage to the ship is minimal but you lot look as if you could do with a shower.” Apart from Cally and himself everyone was covered in stone dust. 

***

It had taken a very long shower to get all the dust of out his hair, off his skin and away from the back of his throat. The whole experience had not been at all pleasant, Avon thought to himself. Best to put it behind him and move on.

He came out of the shower naked with an armful of his filthy clothes for the laundry and stopped abruptly.

“How did you get in?”

“I asked Zen to open the door,” Tarrant said. 

Avon made a mental note to tinker with the ship’s programming as soon as feasible. Dumping his clothes in the chute, he turned to find something to wear. “What do you want?”

“I’m curious about our new guest. Care to tell me who and what he is?”

“He’s not staying,”Avon said. “We’ll drop him off as soon as we find somewhere suitable,”

“That doesn’t answer either question.”

“Why are you interested?” Avon had found a black shirt and a clean pair of trousers and had started to get dressed. He could have done without Tarrant’s rather intent gaze but he supposed it didn’t matter.

“For one thing because he might be Servalan’s spy, or a saboteur. I’ve got Cally watching his room but I don’t know if we need to be armed around him. For another, he looks to me like the face on that message you fell for and I’m looking forward to you telling me exactly how stupid you were. Don’t wear those trousers, by the way.”

Avon paused. “Why not?”

“Because somehow they manage to be even more distracting than you naked, and since we’re no longer in that sort of relationship I’d rather not be distracted.”

Avon snorted and carried on dressing. 

“Saro,” Tarrant said. “Who is he?”

“Nobody important,” Avon said.

“So why the message? And why him?”

“He’d spent some time in jail with Blake a few years ago,” Avon said reluctantly. “That’s how he knew about France. I’d known him a bit before that. That’s all.”

“That’s odd,” Tarrant said, “because when I spoke to Dayna a few minutes ago I got the impression that there was a great deal more than that. She suggested that I talk to you about it in private, so here I am. Tell.” 

Damn. Avon thought about just refusing but Tarrant was extremely persistent and there was no doubt a great deal of information publicly available on Saro’s trial and conviction. It would be worse to have every fragment of information announced to the flight deck as it was discovered and pored over by the whole crew, and Tarrant was quite capable of that if thwarted. 

He finished dressing. It didn’t matter to him what Tarrant thought, after all. He might as well be told everything and the subject would then be closed.

 

It hadn’t take very long to relate the whole story. No more than ten minutes, Avon reckoned. Tarrant had for once been quiet and reasonably attentive, despite the trousers. 

“I see,” he said when Avon stopped. “I’d really like an objective opinion, but in the absence of that yours will have to do. Did your chat to the security forces make things worse for him?” 

Avon shrugged. “It was evidence at his trial, but so was his own confession. The information that I had suggested that they were going to arrest and question him, so they would have got the confession out of him even if I’d said nothing. My opinion, whether you consider it objective or not, was that it made no real difference in the end. Except for me, of course.”

“You couldn’t have been certain of that at the time, though.”

“Not certain, no. But reasonably sure.”

Tarrant nodded and sank back into the chair. “I find it difficult, “ he said, “to understand how someone could betray a friendship so comprehensively, even if they thought it was the logical thing to do.”

“Your lack of understanding is really not my problem.” Avon said. 

“It never has been, has it? Is Saro your problem?”

“Not once he’s off the ship, no. Servalan would have killed him. We saved him from that. We don’t owe him anything else, and he’s got no skills that are useful to us. Give him some money, leave him somewhere relatively safe and have done with it.”

Tarrant’s bright eyes considered him. “No plans to take up where you left off, then?”

“No.” 

“Ah,” Tarrant said. “Now that’s interesting.” He started to rise from his chair. “I think I might have a chat with Saro next. It seems we have quite a lot in common.” 

“If you think you can use this to make trouble for me,” Avon warned him, “you will come to regret it. Saro will be off this ship in the next twenty four hours. Screw around with me and you might just end up going with him.”

“Screwing around with you hasn’t turned out particularly well for either of us,” Tarrant’s voice was light. “It seems that you’re a great deal more trouble than you’re worth. I’ll see you later. Oh, and Avon?” 

Avon frowned at him. 

“You’re welcome.” Tarrant said, and he walked out.

 

The ship was quiet and still, deep in the nowhere between the stars as it and its crew recovered. Tarrant had declared that he was going to be keeping the necessary eye on Saro and they had both disappeared into his quarters. Cally and Vila were sharing the next couple of watches between them. That left Avon and Dayna to eat and then sleep off the effects of their short but unpleasant ordeal on Europa. Nobody was expecting to see them for the next ten hours or so. 

Avon found when he got back to his rooms that he wasn’t particularly tired. He was reasonably safe from interruptions; he’d had a word with Zen and no-one was going to be pulling that particular trick again. He sat for a few minutes, hand smoothing the leather across his knees, thinking. It appeared that time for incuriousness had passed. If Tarrant was now planning to make some kind of serious issue out of recent events Avon needed to be properly forewarned. 

Decision made, he stood with an abrupt motion, walked to the console in his quarters and slid the blue crystal into the reader.

 

On the screen they were dragging Tarrant back up to the bed and the waiting restraints. This time he stopped struggling as soon as the cuffs were on, clearly husbanding his remaining energy for when it might do some good. It must be the blond guy’s turn, Avon thought; despite the drugs they’d taken it looked as if neither of the others would be capable again for another few minutes. One of them picked up the whip again.

Avon became aware yet again of the demands of his own physiological response and yet again he ignored them. He wasn’t watching this for entertainment. He turned the sound up yet again to hear the soft voices. The men wanted some sort of formal submission from Tarrant but they weren’t in any great hurry to get it. Tarrant had said very little in the last half hour except variations on “fuck off and die”.

Things had already gone much further than a casual liaison would normally have permitted. That wasn’t the men’s fault. They’d started off gradually enough, as one does, testing the boundaries. A safeword used was always a disappointing end to a session. It was Tarrant who’d given the impression that he had no boundaries, snarling defiance regardless of what they did. Avon could tell that he had almost immediately found himself far past any possible comfort zone but there was no reason why a stranger would take his act at anything but face value. If you actually needed someone to stop hurting you, well, that’s what the safewords were for. 

Tarrant knew that! Avon found his teeth were clenched together as he watched the continuing abuse of the limp body. The man had always been quite prepared to curtail Avon’s activities when he’d had enough and enough had never been so much as a tenth of this brutality. Why the hell was he letting this go on?

The man at the near end of the bed dragged Tarrant’s head up by his hair and spoke to him again, then pushed a small item into his fettered hand. That sequence was familiar enough to Avon; they were about to do something that would stop their victim from speaking and they were checking that he was aware of the squeeze device in his hand that was his alternative out. Avon couldn’t fault the men as far as the rules went but then he’d checked rather carefully on references before he’d booked Tarrant in with them. 

Tarrant had just received a reminder of his way out, but he still made no move to take it. The two men not already fucking him strapped a hood over his head, and forced a guard between his teeth. Avon had known this was coming; he’d seen the mask in the room afterwards, and the marks around Tarrant’s mouth. He found himself a little irritated that they’d done this to Tarrant before he’d ever got round to it, and then he remembered that he wasn’t going to be doing anything to Tarrant any more and that was even more irritating. Since Tarrant wasn’t going to be saying anything for a while Avon left the screen to play out the inevitable next part while he got up and got himself a rather strong drink. 

By the time the screen finally went blank Avon had helped himself to a number of strong drinks and was feeling rather belligerent and slightly incoherent. Also he’d forgotten at some point about the not entertainment thing and needed another clean pair of trousers. 

Tarrant had been stupid. Really really stupid. Avon didn’t think he’d ever seen someone behave that stupidly in that particular context. He thought it was probably a good idea to go and tell the man so, so he grabbed some more clothes and headed towards Tarrant’s quarters. 

Tarrant looked puzzled when he opened the door. “Trouble?”

“Inevitably,” Avon told him. “I want to talk to you.”

Tarrant sniffed. “Have you been drinking?”

“That’s not relevant.” Avon shoved past him and into the room. Saro had been sleeping on the couch; he had sat up, rather blearily.

“Get out,” Avon told him. “Go to the flight deck and talk to Cally. Or Vila. I don’t care.” 

Saro looked towards Tarrant who nodded. “I’ll walk you down there, then come back and get you when this is done.” He considered Avon. “Don’t touch anything. I’ll be back in five minutes.”

“He can go on his own,” Avon said. “I want to talk to you now.”

“He can’t go on his own,” Tarrant contradicted. “Being your ex and Servalan’s dupe is really not sufficient recommendation to have him wander around the ship unwatched. You can walk with us if you prefer. “

“No,” Avon said. He didn’t want to talk to Saro. He wanted to talk to Tarrant. “Hurry up.”

Tarrant was back before Avon had had time to fall asleep on the couch himself.

“So, what do you want?”

“You’re an arrogant show off and you’re going to get yourself seriously hurt,” Avon said abruptly.

Tarrant looked slightly aback. “I got us away from Europa, didn’t I? I’d have liked to see you try.”

“I’m not talking about the bloody ship,” Avon said. “I’m talking about your antics at the club.” 

Tarrant frowned at him. “That was weeks ago. What’s so urgent about it that you have to charge in here now, and half cut at that?”

“I’ve just seen the tape,” Avon told him.

“Ah, “ Tarrant said without much surprise. “I thought at the time that you might have arranged something like that. I’m a bit surprised that you’ve only just watched it.” His eyes flickered over Avon. “Oh. Is that why the latest change of clothes? And the alcohol? You’ve been having a little party on your own watching me get screwed over to your instructions? Fuck, Avon. You really are a bastard, you know.” 

“Not really,” Avon told him. “I was only using it as it was originally intended. You did all that just to make me jealous, didn’t you? All that stuff that you’d never let me do, but a bunch of strangers, they get to do whatever they like?”

Tarrant stared at him. “They got to do what they liked because there were three of them. Didn’t you see me fighting back?”

Avon shrugged. “It was all play acting. If you’d wanted them to stop you’d have safeworded.” 

“You think I didn’t because I wanted them to do that? To make you jealous? Hell, Avon. I had no idea you’d be jealous. You arranged the damn thing and then you went off to fuck someone else. That’s not exactly the behaviour of someone who cares what anyone might do to me.” 

He squinted at Avon. “You are jealous though, aren’t you? You’d have liked to be one of those men. Maybe the tall one. I thought he seemed to be having the best time.”

Avon felt uncomfortably on the defensive. He didn’t like that. “I think you’ll find that I could be a great deal more creative than any of them, “ he snarled. “But letting me play isn’t in your manipulative little game plan, is it?”

Tarrant glared at him. “If you mean by that I’m not going to sleep with you again then you’re spot on. Go away and sober up somewhere else. I’m still surprisingly tired from saving your life.” 

“Dayna’s life,” Avon said.

“If you like, yes. Now get out.”


	4. Accusations

Life would be so much easier, Tarrant thought, if he could just bring himself not to care. Or care only about what had been done to him and the revenge that he would at some point take.

It shouldn’t matter that Avon had just spent two hours pleasuring himself over a video of Tarrant being hurt, or that he had then come over to berate Tarrant for not offering to go through it again as a live act just for his entertainment. Rather, it should make things so much simpler, knowing what sort of man Avon really was. 

He reached the flight deck and the others turned round to greet him.

“Isn’t Avon with you?” Saro sounded disappointed. For God’s sake, did no-one on this fucking ship have any sense at all?

“I think you can assume that Avon ceased to have any use for you when he betrayed you to the Federation,” Tarrant told him. “If I were you I’d stay out of his way before he finds some reason to sell you out again.” 

Saro looked at him with annoyingly hopeful eyes. “He said that he was sorry.”

“Really? That doesn’t sound at all like our Avon. Did he by any remote chance need something from you at the time?”

“Tarrant,” Cally said in warning. “This is hardly the time or place.”

“Fine," Tarrant said. “Lets all pretend Avon’s not a sociopath, shall we? Right up until the next time when he decides one of us is expendable again. Or maybe all of us.”

“He’s not a sociopath,” Cally said. “He’s risked his life for all of us, often enough. You ought to settle this quarrel you have with him, Tarrant.” 

“It’s not a quarrel,” Tarrant said. “It’s a revelation. The same revelation, I imagine, that Saro had when the Fed prosecutors told him who was testifying against him, which is that there is no betrayal to which Kerr Avon will not stoop for his own advantage.”

"That will do!" Cally was angry. "If you have a genuine accusation to make then you should make it when Avon is here and capable of defending himself. If you don't, then you can stop these slurs behind his back." 

"Oh, I have a genuine accusation," Tarrant said. "So does Saro, though whether he chooses to bring it forward is up to him."

" Very well," Cally said. " I'll get Avon now and we can settle this."

"Not now!” Tarrant said, startled.

“Why not?” 

“He's drunk. I wouldn't want to be accused of taking advantage. Let him sleep it off first.” 

Cally sighed. " I'm not at all sure that I believe you. I've never seen Avon drink to excess." 

"Consider yourself fortunate,' Tarrant told her. 'It turns out that he's not a good tempered drunk.' 

“You’re not making this any easier,” she said. “Very well. By the start of the fourth shift everyone ought to be rested and awake. We might as well do this properly if you insist on doing it at all.” 

***

“Zen. Status update.”

As usual Avon listened to the computer’s report while showering. They were still motionless in the dark, the repairs were completed and nothing seemed to be amiss.

“Cally requests an urgent private conversation as soon as you are awake.” Zen concluded. 

Avon frowned. That wasn’t usual. “Tell her ten minutes in my quarters.”

He’d had time to get coffee as well as dress by the time she arrived, and handed her one. She nodded in thanks, the frown lines deep, then glanced round his room. Her eyes rested briefly on the empty bottles from last night then she looked back at him.

“What’s this about?”

“Tarrant,” she said briefly.

He should have guessed. “What’s he done now?”

“It’s what he’s proposing to do.” She explained the situation. Avon drank his coffee and didn’t interrupt. There was a pause once she was done.

“So this is a trial?” he said slowly, still thinking.

“I think Tarrant regards it as one.”

“And what’s the potential sentence on conviction?”

“He wants you to leave.”

“Of course he does. I suppose that’s better than wanting my execution. Is there anything else?”

Cally looked slightly uncomfortable. “He asked me to tell you that he expects the evidence to be available and untampered with.” 

Avon raised an eyebrow. “Indeed?”

“Is that a problem?”

“Not at all. “ He took the data crystal out of the reader, tossed it to Cally. “Since you seem to be in charge of proceedings, you’d better have this. Take good care of it. I imagine Tarrant might be quite uncomfortable if it were to fall into the wrong hands.”

She turned it over in her hands. “Not you?”

“I have no idea what Tarrant thinks that’s going to prove. What’s on there is no concern of mine.”

“What is on there?” she asked.

“You’ll have to wait for Tarrant to tell you. As I said, it’s his business not mine.”

She looked down at the crystal again. “You don’t recommend that I watch it beforehand then?”

“I think,” he said, with perfect accuracy, “that Tarrant would be best advised to drop the whole thing before anyone else watches that. I suggest that it would be wise to put off viewing unless and until he absolutely insists.”

She nodded and stood up. “Four hours, then,” she said. “But tell me if you want more time to think about what you want to say.”

“I don’t need any time at all,” Avon told her. “I realise that this is going to come as something of a shock to you all but my conscience is entirely clear. All that’s going to happen is that Tarrant will embarrass himself, everyone will tell him that he’s a fool and things will return to something resembling normal, or as normal as Liberator ever gets.”

Avon closed the door behind Cally and sat down. This was unexpected. No, more than that. Inexplicable. He shouldn’t have drunk so much last night and some of the things he’d said to Tarrant were unfortunate. It was a little embarrassing to have effectively confessed to a certain amount of jealousy and he wouldn’t have been entirely surprised if Tarrant, still apparently in a foul temper, had chosen to mock him publicly about the admission.

But nothing he’d said, and he thought back over the slightly blurred conversation very carefully, would be evidence of any particular wrongdoing except possibly the slightly borderline acquisition of the video without Tarrant’s express knowledge. And Tarrant had barely seemed to register that last night. Avon couldn’t quite imagine that Tarrant would be prepared to expose his activities to the rest of the crew just to protest the existence of a recording. After all if he’d asked, Avon would simply have handed it over to him. 

There was Saro, of course, who might accuse Avon of betraying him to the Federation, but what had that to do with Tarrant, even less the tape? And Avon merely had to explain, as he’d done to Dayna and Tarrant already, that his actions back then had made no difference whereas his rescue of the man a few hours ago undoubtedly saved his life. How could anyone prove differently now? 

Avon looked at the blank screen for a few minutes. Tarrant undoubtedly had an exhibitionist streak but what could he possibly think to gain by showing everyone what even someone with Avon’s experience had to rate as a fairly extreme scenario? 

Too many question but possibly none of them mattered. The most sensible thing for Avon to do would be to let Tarrant simply get on with making whatever dramatic revelations he chose. If this ended up involving rather more of Avon’s personal life than he would normally discuss, that didn’t really matter as long as people understood that it hadn’t been his choice to reveal it. He was neither embarrassed nor guilty about his predilections, merely acceptably discreet. And after all, how much did he really care what any of them thought of him? It wasn’t as if it was all the old crowd. It wasn’t Blake. 

That settled, he went down to the galley for breakfast then headed to the lab to get some work done. 

***

“I misjudged him before,” Saro said. “I don’t want to do it again.”

“No,” Tarrant agreed. “All I’ve done is tell you what he said to me. What you make of it is up to you.”

Saro was pacing up and down in the small space of Tarrant’s quarters. He looked across again. “You’re sure he never mentioned me before?”

“No.”

“And he didn’t say he was sorry?”

“Far from it. When I said I couldn’t understand how he could have done it he was ...well. Dismissive.” 

“And he said he didn’t want me to stay.”

“He said we had no use for you.” Tarrant said calmly.

Saro sat down in the armchair and stared at the opposite wall. “You know... I nearly forgave him,” he said in a numb voice. “After what he did, I nearly forgave him. How could I have thought like that for a moment?”

“Because you’re a better person than he is,” Tarrant said.”We’re all better people than him. That’s why we keep giving him the benefit of the doubt. I’m not going to do that any more.”

Saro looked up at the younger man. “What should I do?”

***

Avon was polishing a particularly delicate lens, having instructed Dayna on the flight deck that the ship was not to move without warning him except in an emergency. It was precise but not absorbing work and unsurprisingly his mind had wandered, first to the zero gee crystals created under similar circumstances and still carefully packaged against future need and then to the memory of Del Tarrant perched on the end of the same bench that Avon was now working at. 

Tarrant had been trying to provoke him. He'd laughed a lot, Avon remembered. It had been a while since he'd seen Tarrant laugh like that. 

Rather abruptly a notion struck him. If Tarrant failed in his attempt to evict Avon then things might not go back to a slightly embarrassed normal. Instead Tarrant might leave. 

Avon put down the lens, carefully. He knew his ability to predict other people's actions was unreliable at best. Still, the more he considered this the more plausible it seemed. This was a public confrontation and Del Tarrant was a proud man. Whatever had inspired this tremendous sense of grievance, his pride was unlikely to survive the bemusement or amusement of the others at his bizarre revelations intact. 

That changed matters entirely. Avon glanced at the time. Just half an hour until this performance was supposed to start. 

"Zen. Tell Tarrant to meet me in the lab straight away."

A short pause them Zen's expressionless voice. "Message from Del Tarrant. Go to hell."

“Where is he, Zen?”

"Del Tarrant is on the flight deck."

Avon left his tools and the lens on the desk and walked rather faster than normal up to the flight deck. A quick glance told him that everyone else was there. 

“Tarrant. I need to talk to you now. In private. “ 

"Didn't you get get my message?" Tarrant asked. “I've nothing to say to you that can't be said in front of everyone else." 

"Yes, you have," Avon told him. "Ten minutes and we can settle this." The timing was a bit on the wildly optimistic side but he needed Tarrant to cooperate. 

“No,” Tarrant said. “You've had enough chances, I'm staying right here.”

Avon looked round at the others. "Out."

"Avon," Cally warned. "We won't be pushed around."

"Very well. I'll ask you politely to leave," Avon said with barely restrained impatience. "If you want Liberator to still have a crew of five in two hours time you will et me talk to Tarrant in private." He tried to sound a little less irritated. "Give us ten minutes, and then if everyone still wants to go through with this charade I'll play along."

It took another few minutes to move them but in the end they did go. Tarrant was clearly tempted to go with them but he stayed to face Avon down.

“Getting cold feet?” he asked. “It’s a bit late for apologies.”

“There’s a question I haven’t asked you, “Avon said. “It is generally considered extremely impolite to ask, the answer being no-one’s business but your own, and there are only a couple of possible answers and I was fairly certain that I could work out which applied. However it turns out that I do need to ask it now.”

Tarrant grimaced and sat down at his console. “I can’t stop you talking. Don’t hold your breath for an answer though. I doubt that I’ll feel like helping you with your enquiries.”

“Well then,” Avon said. “Why didn’t you use your safeword?”

Tarrant dropped his head briefly in his hands then looked up again. “What possible difference does that make now?”

“Let me try this a different way. The normal reason for not stopping a scenario is because you are content for it to continue. Was that the case?”

“Of course not,” Tarrant snapped. “You saw the damn tape. Do you really think I might have been enjoying that?”

“No,” Avon said. “Nevertheless, you hadn’t stopped it. If you weren’t enjoying it you must have had another reason to allow it to continue. My only other theory was that you were doing it to provoke a reaction from me. I understand from our conversation last night that that wasn’t the case either.” 

“No,” Tarrant said flatly. “If I wanted to get a rise out of you I had plenty of ways to do it that didn’t involve getting tortured for two hours by a bunch of strangers.” 

“So,“ Avon said. “Instead of stepping away as soon as you found events unpleasant you let them run their course, for reason or reasons which remain, to me at least, mysterious. Is that accurate?”

“You should have known why,” Tarrant hissed. 

“I can assure you that in my experience people do not just fail to use safewords for no reason. I expected- confidently expected- that you would use yours if you needed to keep yourself safe. I should perhaps have watched the tape before and I should have stayed sober while I did. Then I’d have known to ask earlier.”

“Why didn’t you watch it?” Tarrant asked.

Avon was pretty sure that Tarrant was merely steering the conversation away from answering his question, but the man was at least talking to him. “I really didn’t want to.” 

“You liked it when you did, though.” Tarrant’s voice had turned harsh again.

“It was arousing.” Avon said, very carefully. “It was not enjoyable.”  
￼  
"So why did you set it up?" 

"It was within the parameters you gave me," Avon said, trying not to sound defensive. Tarrant just kept looking at him. 

Avon wondered how accurate it was wise to be. He settled for something moderately close to the truth. "I thought it might teach you not to be so blasé about what you get yourself into. Your parameters should never have been that broad in the first place. You refused to listen to me about caution so I arranged an object lesson." 

"A lesson?" Tarrant sounded unbelieving. "A fucking lesson?" 

"It was meant to be very short, " Avon reminded him. " You had merely to decide that you weren't enjoying it and stop."

"So you thought you’d deliberately set me up to fail because I wouldn’t follow your orders?"

“That's an unnecessarily emotional way of putting it.”

“I had an unnecessarily emotional bloody awful time.” Tarrant retorted. 

“You didn’t have to have any time at all!” Avon realised his voice was rising, and took a couple of breaths. “All you had to do...”

“Was admit defeat.” Tarrant snapped. “Was to lose. Was to come back, tail between my legs, and tell you that you’d been right and yes, Avon, I’ll do whatever I’m told next time. Was to tell the bastards who were beating me up that they’d won the fight and I surrendered.”

He was on his feet now, face white. “How long do you think it’s been since I surrendered a fight, Kerr Avon? Not lost one- anyone can lose a fight- but dropped to my knees and begged the guys hurting me for mercy because I didn’t want the pain any more?”

Avon felt a coldness in the pit of his stomach. “That’s not what a safeword means.”

“Oh, not in the context of a little light amusement, I’m sure. But you were the one who made this into a bloody object lesson, remember? There were three of them and they beat me up and they forced themselves on me and you think it’s my fucking fault because all I had to do to get them to stop was to lose!”

He waited a moment, until it must have been clear that Avon was not going to say anything. Then he laughed bitterly. “Do you know what the funniest thing about the whole thing is, Avon?”

“No.”

“I won. You set up your object lesson to beat me from the start and I stood it for two bloody hours and I won. And you didn’t even notice, did you?”

He glanced at the console. “Your ten minutes is up. Shall we get the others back in and get on with this?”

“Not yet.” Avon said. He’d barely had time to process the realisation that he’d made a serious mistake. He needed to keep Tarrant talking to him. “It is, I suppose, possible that I need to take some of the responsibility for what happened.” 

“Try again,” Tarrant said. 

Avon sighed inwardly. He wasn’t going to get away lightly. “I’ve never been particularly interested in what was going on in my partners’ heads as long as the consequences were entertaining, but even so I should have known that all that defiance was hardwired, not play. And since you’ve been using your safeword to screw with me ever since you chose it, I shouldn’t have relied on you using it sensibly.”

He tilted his head on one side to look at Tarrant. “Without giving it much thought I suppose I expected you to behave like a normal sub in a extreme situation, but you’re neither normal nor submissive. That was my error, which I regret.” 

“I told you that it was too late for apologies,” Tarrant’s voice hadn’t softened. 

“Very well. What else do you want?”

Tarrant’s smile was unfriendly. “You’ll do anything to avoid exposure?”

“Liberator needs a pilot,” Avon said. “You’re about to do something which you will later bitterly regret. I would prefer to discourage you if I can. Admittedly my record on discouraging you from things you later bitterly regret is not good recently but I still feel obliged to try. What is your price?”

“Leave Liberator,” Tarrant said.

“No.” Avon didn’t need to think about that one. “I might owe you something. I don’t owe you that much. It wouldn’t benefit you anyway. You lot need me.” 

Tarrant’s laugh sounded a little more sincere this time. “So the world isn’t ending, anyway. For a moment there I thought guilt had actually frazzled your brain. Well, I don’t accept your belated apology and you won’t fuck off and die to please me so we seem to be at a bit of an impasse. The others will have to decide.”

“Don’t show them that tape.” Avon tried to put as much urgency into his voice as he could. “Tell them what you like about me, raise a lynch mob if you must, but don’t give them the pictures. They won’t ever be able to forget them and neither you nor they will be able to live with that.”

“That’s my decision,” Tarrant said. “Zen, tell the others... Zen?”

Avon whirled to look at the screen. The lights were barely moving. “Zen! Respond!”

Nothing. He took three steps to the table and shoved Orac’s key in. “Orac! What’s wrong with Zen?”

The box beeped a few times, rather pathetically, and went silent.

Avon tried his console. The ship wasn’t completely dead but everything was happening very slowly and with minimum power. 

He pulled up the most recent scan before the power went. The ship had detected nothing for five hundred thousand spacials in every direction. They weren’t moving so they couldn’t have flown into anything. 

“It’s something on the ship,” he told Tarrant, who had been trying to get some life out of the pilot’s console. “It has to be. Which makes it Saro.”

Tarrant frowned at him, their argument clearly temporarily forgotten. “He doesn’t have the skills for this.”

“All he needed to do was to bring something on board. and turn it on. This must be Servalan’s back up plan. Immobilise the ship, set off a beacon and wait for them to catch up with us.” Avon shook his head in puzzlement. “Why would he wait so long, though?”

“He’s only just decided which side he’s on,” Tarrant’s voice was abrupt. ”He had some faith in you, God knows why, and I took it away because I needed an ally. We have to find him.”

Avon followed him at a run.

 

Finding Saro turned out to be difficult. The others had been too distracted by what might be happening on the flight deck to keep an eye on him and he’d slipped away at some point.. With Zen out of commission there was no alternative but to search the huge ship compartment by compartment. 

Tarrant was pushing aside what felt like miles of racks of clothes in the costume room when Vila came panting up. 

“Dayna’s got him! She’s taking him to the flight deck.”

Avon had returned there some time ago to see if he could coax any sort of early warning out of the scans. Tarrant pushed past Vila and broke into a sprint. 

He ran the full length of Liberator. By the time he got there he was seriously out of breath. He rested a hand on the nearest console and gulped air, other hand on the stitch at his side. 

Saro had been forced up against Zen's quiescent screen. His arm was twisted high up against his back and he was whimpering. Avon's month was against his ear. "Where is it?"

The only other human in the room was Dayna and she was making no attempt to interfere. Tarrant pushed himself up off the console. "Avon. What are you doing?"

Avon twisted the arm a little higher. " Tell your friend here to tell us where the device is. He's hidden it somewhere in the ship."

Tarrant was uncomfortably reminded of the times Avon had done the same to him. "Let him go,” he said. “I’ll get him to talk.”

Avon stood back reluctantly. " We may have very little time," 

Tarrant moved to stand between him and Saro. "I know what he'd like to do to you," he said to the white-faced man. The sympathy in his voice was mostly genuine. “All those years of horror and you thought you might be safe here. But he’s still here to hurt you.”

“Don’t let him.” Saro begged.

“I’d really like to say that I’d kill him rather than let him touch you again, “ Tarrant said. “But there are three other people on this ship and I’m not going to let them die in order to protect you. Tell me where the device is and I’ll make sure Avon comes nowhere near you again. “

“And if I don’t tell you?” Saro said nervously.

He glanced over to Dayna. “Then my shipmate and I are going to go to the galley to drink coffee. It might be the last chance we have for a hot drink before the Federation space us, so we might as well take our time over it.”

“I thought you were on my side!”

“That was before you crippled my ship. I offered you the chance for justice and you chose to sell us out to the Feds instead.”

“You didn’t offer enough.” Saro said. “Exile’s nothing. Servalan will be certain to kill him.”

Tarrant found that his sympathy had ebbed away. “Not before he kills you first. Are you going to tell me where the device is or shall I leave you two to it?”

 

They found the small box where Saro had told them to look, tucked behind a loose piece of Liberator’s panelling. Avon fiddled with it for a tense ten minutes or so before figuring out how to turn it off. Saro couldn’t tell them, even after a fresh round of intimidation.

“Zen. Status report.”

“All systems functional. External scans report three ships at approximately ten thousand spacials.”

Right on top of them, well within firing range. “Evasion pattern four,” Tarrant commanded, and to the others, “Do we shoot at them or run?” 

“I vote run,” Vila suggested. “I don’t think any of us are really in the mood for heroic space battles.”

“You’re probably right,” Avon said. “Just shake them off, Tarrant, and get us out of here.” 

 

Saro was locked up for a few hours while they made their escape, then teleported down to the first system they came to with a reasonable level of civilisation and a moderately decent reputation. Tarrant suspected that Cally had quietly given the man some funds from Liberator’s supplies but he doubted that she’d been over-generous given the circumstances. Avon managed to be somewhere else during the transfer. 

By silent consent, nothing further was said aboard Liberator about Avon’s trial. Tarrant found a small box containing a blue data crystal on his console. From the fact that no-one spoke to him about it he knew what it had to be. He chucked it into the back of a cupboard in his quarters and tried to forget it was there.

Exchanges between them on the flight deck were civil, if rather strained. Elsewhere in the ship Tarrant tried to avoid being on his own with Avon, and he suspected from the ease with which he achieved this that Avon was doing the same. 

This careful co-existence lasted a bit under a week before Tarrant cracked.

 

“What?” Avon said abruptly. He was in loose night clothes and didn’t look at all pleased.

“Can I come in and talk to you?”

“Why is it always my sleep that has to be sacrificed to your loquaciousness?” Avon turned and padded barefoot back to his armchair. Since he’d left the door open Tarrant followed.

“Well?”

Tarrant sat on the end of the desk, pushing a handful of wires and papers aside. “It could have been worse.” he said.

Avon nodded his head slightly, indicating that he was listening.

“It was painful and humiliating and given half a chance I’d have castrated the bastards and you with my bare hands, but I did know that I could stop it. That made a difference.”

Avon said nothing. Tarrant sighed, went on. “I’m not traumatised. I’m pissed off that you set it up like that and it didn’t even occur to you that taking the easy way out came at a cost that I wouldn’t want to pay.”

“Is there anything else?”Avon asked.

“I think that’s it.”

“What do you expect me do to about it now?” Avon sounded nothing more than curious. 

“I’d be interested to know whether that apology is still available even when your neck isn’t on the line.” 

“If you think it would help.” Avon paused, clearly considering his words. “ I found your habit of not taking advice irritating and this was an opportunity to show you incontrovertibly that I had been right. The idea of you being bullied a little by someone other than me wasn’t unpleasant either. I didn’t for one second think that you’d have any trouble using your safeword. If I had then I wouldn’t had set things up like that.”

“That sounds more like an explanation than an apology.” Tarrant said.

Avon sighed. “Very well. I failed to properly analyse your motives or appreciate the extent of your likely discomfort. I’m sorry.” 

“Apology noted,” Tarrant said. “Of course if I hadn’t been too pigheaded to listen to you in the first place the whole situation wouldn’t have arisen. You did tell me your club wasn’t somewhere I wanted to go.”

“So why did you insist on it?”

“Because you were going to be there. If I had to put up with the knowledge of exactly when and where you’d be off screwing someone who wasn’t me I thought I might as well try to get properly distracted until it was over.”

“You were jealous?” Avon asked cautiously. 

“Of course I was jealous! Wasn’t that obvious?”

“No.”

Tarrant shook his head. “Do you ever try to understand anything of what goes on in my head?”

“Not in the slightest,” Avon said. “I’ve never considered that it would profit me. You’re not a particularly logical person. You would be better off just telling me in the future whatever you think I need to know.”

“Right,” Tarrant said. “In case you really are as blind as you pretend, I’d better tell you that I’m still cross, but I’d like to figure out some way to get over it because although the last three weeks have been rubbish the ones before were rather good. That’s if you’re still interested?”

Avon was clearly trying not to look startled. “We need to have a talk about use of safewords first,” he said. "If you insist on being unorthodox I need to at least be aware of how.”

“I’m always unorthodox.” Tarrant found himself smiling. It felt rather good. “I won’t take up any more of your precious sleeping time. I’ll see you tomorrow.” 

At some point, he thought as he walked back to his own quarters, he’d choose to stay. Not yet, but maybe soon. In the meantime he suspected that he could have fun winding Avon up by flirting with him without consequences. 

Back in his rooms he dug around the back of the cupboard for the blue crystal and tossed it into the rubbish. Liberator would recycle the crystal but the recording would be gone for good. Tarrant thought briefly of Saro, now starting his own recycled life somewhere. Fresh starts weren’t that easy but they could always try.


End file.
